To be clear, your target account list is:
- Your highest potential target accounts
- Your ‘Big opportunities or big hits’ list
- Your elephant or whale list
We call these TOP Line Account™ opportunities. (TOP Line Accounts are defined as your biggest and best opportunities and are generally worth at least 5x your average prospect size.)
Many companies start and end with ‘The list’. In other words, once the list is developed, they don’t know what to do next. Below is a condensed roadmap to help you get going.
Start Here: Prioritize your list. It’s overwhelming to tackle the entire list at once. Start small to gain some mini wins. This approach will give the account based selling team the incentive to keep going and add more over time.
Go Here: Commission the account based selling team. Start with a strong leader. If the Account Executive or Account Manager doesn’t have the necessary leadership skills then the Sales Manager may have to step in. It takes a team with a capable leader to develop and close TOP Line Accounts.
End Here: Allocate time for account planning. The account based team must develop the customer strategy, relationship plans, Win Themes™, and competitive blocks. This work occurs over time and is refreshed regularly as players are deployed throughout the sales process. However, when the team commits to the process and does the work, they will improve their likelihood of success exponentially. Here’s an example:
The Reward of Systematically Working your Target List
Common close ratio: 25%
Add pre-call planning: +20%
Add account strategy work: +20%
Add Win Themes™: +10%
Add competitive blocking: +10%
NEW CLOSE RATIO: 85%
Congratulations for tackling your list and ‘Ringing the bell’ more frequently with TOP Line Account wins.
The Perfect Book for your Upcoming Sales Kick-Off:
Invest in your executive selling efforts by giving your sellers the book that is guaranteed to enhance their sales performance. The TOP Seller Advantage: Powerful Strategies to Build Long-Term Executive Relationships includes proven strategies to ensure sellers develop long lasting executive access.
The C-suite executive perspectives at the end of each chapter reveal exactly how senior leaders view sales encounters and what would cause them to keep the door open for follow up meetings.
Pipeliner CRM visually empowers target account-based selling. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.
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